Thoughts on poverty and homelessness in the U.S.A.

Posts tagged ‘jill stein’

A city in Florida is making it illegal for homeless people to carry possessions in public places.

My question is, how will they know whether or not a person is homeless? Are they just going to target people who are poorly dressed, assume they are homeless then take away whatever possessions they are carrying with them? If someone is walking home from the grocery store, carrying a bag of groceries and looking poorly dressed, might the police not stop that person and demand he/she give up the groceries? Suppose the police officer is hungry, for example, hasn’t eaten in hours and then this rather homeless-looking person shows up carrying a bag of groceries in a city that doesn’t allow possessions to be displayed on public sidewalks?

Am I trying to be funny here? Just a tongue-in-cheek little anecdote for today’s Mad Bag Lady blog entry?

Look, I know most Americans don’t care at all about the homeless. Whether you’ll admit to it or not, most of you still believe in the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” nonsense. You think that if you keep supporting the system, keep working hard at tiny wages for bosses who act more like slaveholders than business owners that one day someone will recognize your good “attitude” (slaves are notorious for having good attitudes toward their situation) and promote you to CEO of corrupt corporate America. So you dare not speak out on behalf of the homeless. After all, they’ve just made “bad choices,” obviously. Otherwise, they’d be temporarily embarrassed millionaires too.

Believe me, I get it. I get it.

But remember this: dictators always choose a scapegoat, deprive them of their civil rights first and convince the rest of the population to support it. But the real agenda is to deprive everyone of their rights. It’s just easier to start with the most unpopular people first. The homeless are just guinea pigs for an overall plan to eliminate our public spaces, privatize everything, and take away all of our rights (unless of course we’re wealthy and can afford to buy the streets and sidewalks so that we can do whatever we want on them.)

So Hitler attacked the Jews, for example. But ultimately, no one was free under Nazi leadership. What many people don’t know is that Hitler went after union leaders too. Union leaders, communists and democratic socialists–anyone who wanted more civil liberties for the average person (as opposed to the wealthy elite) was the enemy of Hitler and the Nazis.

This might surprise many Americans who’ve been brainwashed into believing that “socialism” is the enemy. In fact, Hitler was strongly against democratic socialism and communism.

Think about that for a moment. Please. Please think, and think for yourself, if only for a moment. Because it’s important to remember that “communism,” “socialism,” “capitalism,” etc., are all just labels. None of those systems are practiced in their purest forms (at least to my knowledge.) Most countries use ideas from all of these systems and combine them to create their own systems. (More about this will be addressed in a future blog.) The Nazis may often be thought of as socialists and may have claimed to be wanting to help the average German (who was struggling during the Great Depression) but the Nazis persecuted union leaders, democratic socialists and communists, threw them in prison or executed them. What the Nazis said publicly and what they actually did were often two different things, as we now know from history. (Oddly, I had a hard time finding any videos online about this. Most were filled with propaganda about the Nazis. However, I’ve read the history of Nazi Germany, and I urge you to do the same, so that you don’t believe the lies being told by people who assume you won’t take the time to actually read about it for yourself.)

But back to the point. Laws restricting the rights of the homeless to sleep on “public” sidewalks, to ask for money and now to own possessions of any kind affect all of us. Homeless or not, should you decide to “hang out” in public, you may be accosted by the police. And now, in some cities, you can have your possessions taken from you.

Is this what you want, America?

Perhaps I’m an unusual person because I value freedom over everything, including money. (OMG! OMG! You value something over money!) Yes, people. And I’ll even say it again. Freedom, civil liberties, civil rights–are more important to me than money.

I think we’ve all read about wealthy people who’ve been very unhappy in spite of their material wealth. Marilyn Monroe was a classic example. She was beautiful, wealthy and famous but very, very unhappy. She was not free. That’s right, Marilyn Monroe did not have freedom. As a woman, she was oppressed the way all of us females are. She was a mere sex object. And that’s all she was allowed to be. No matter how often she cried out that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, that she didn’t want to be a “joke,” the business people who managed her career would not allow her to be herself. To be herself and a serious actress would have meant speaking in her own authentic voice, not the child-like, false-innocent ingenue voice that had made her famous. Being herself meant not flirting with every man–perhaps there were some men who irritated her. Perhaps there were times when she didn’t feel sexy, when she didn’t want to wear makeup or do her hair. Perhaps there were times when she thought about civil rights issues and politics herself. (From what I’d read, she’d had democratic-socialist ideas. That’s not surprising as she’d grown up poor.) But a sex object does none of those things. A sex object is pretty, mindless and always eager to please.

So tragic. So sad. Ms. Monroe seemed to have it all. But the one thing she didn’t have was that which is priceless, that one thing money cannot buy: freedom. Should she have dropped everything to pursue her own desires, she would have lost all that money, all her connections. And then what? Happiness, maybe. But money? She could have lost it all. Instead she gave up her life. So ultimately she lost it all anyhow.

Personally, I don’t see the point in that. But then who am I? I don’t have a lot of money myself, so I suppose nothing I say really matters, does it? Believe it or not, I was faced with similar choices to Marilyn’s. In some ways, my childhood was similar, and I too–yes, me, the mad bag lady!–was thought of as rather, shall we say, sexy… I could have slept my way to the top…

But I chose a different route. And look where I am today! Woohoo!

I haven’t committed suicide because I chose to be myself and not be commodified, but I, obviously, paid a financial price.

However, it could have been different if I’d had a large following. What I mean is, if millions of Americans had also chosen freedom –and we can do it now, all of us, we can choose freedom today!–if Americans were to choose freedom then the few of us who value freedom wouldn’t be the outcasts, the dregs of society. We’d be the heroes.

But today’s American heroes are sellouts. They live like Marilyn lived. It’s fun for a while until the years go by and you start to find you can’t be a commodity any longer. If you’re an intelligent person, eventually, you’ll start to realize that there are aspects of yourself you’ve had to suppress in order to appease those you’ve allowed to have power over you.

And increasingly, it’s getting dangerous to hold onto our humanity, to be ourselves. We’re all under surveillance. We go to work and our bosses are watching us via cameras all over the building. They watch us as we drive into the parking lot and park our cars. They see us applying that extra dab of lip gloss and straightening out the wrinkles in our clothes before we exit our car. They’re watching while we think we’re alone in the elevator and pulling the crease out of the back of our skirt when we forget someone else is there (behind the surveillance camera.) Even some public restrooms have surveillance cameras in them. But we ignore all that, telling ourselves no one is really watching us, and we adjust our bra strap, maybe remove our blouse to fix our bra, and all the while a man is watching us behind that camera in the restroom where we thought we were alone.

We have no privacy. No time to be ourselves, even when we’re alone. No time to lock ourselves in the bathroom to have a good cry–because they’re watching us there too. But that’s not enough for them.

Now they want the right to stop us and confiscate our belongings–but only if they think we’re homeless.

Well, guess what, Americans? We are homeless! All of us. They’ve taken our country away from us. We grew up living in the Land of the Free and the Brave, the land that claimed, “Give me your tired and your poor…” but our land was taken away from us.

–It’s knowing you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that things will never, EVER, get better (at least not for you. Maybe for someone else, but not for you.) Knowing that poverty is forever… You’ll always be poor, no matter how hard you work, no matter how positive your attitude, no matter how well-written your resume, no matter how great your grade-point average in school, the system is set up to make sure that you will fail. And everyone around you is working hard to make sure you fail. Because that’s just how it is.

That’s the tragedy.

(And I’m going to experiment with writing a short…ehem…post here. Is it possible? Even this parenthetical explanation has become too long…)
Okay, here we go…

The tragedy is not being hungry, poor or even homeless. We’ve all had those types of experiences. Haven’t you ever been really, really hungry? Maybe it’s only 9:30 a.m. and your lunch break isn’t until 12:30 p.m. There’s no vending machine in sight, and you didn’t pack a lunch. Your boss is a stickler and won’t let you leave your desk until exactly 12:30 p.m. What to do? Well, you’ll suffer until 12:30. But maybe you’ll get absorbed in your work and forget all about it because, after all, you know you’ll get a chance to eat. You’ll just have to wait a few hours. Sure, it’s uncomfortable, perhaps even painful if you’re super hungry, but in a few short hours you’ll go out and buy a sandwich, sit down to eat and all will be well. In fact, you may even feel like you’re in heaven. The prolonged hunger may give you a better feeling once you do eat.

Being deprived for a short period of time can cause us to feel incredibly grateful for what little we have and can enhance our feelings of well being once our hunger is satisfied. Getting a chance to eat when we’re hungry feels good. But getting a chance to eat after we’ve been ravenously hungry for hours–deprived of but longing for food, our stomach growling like an uncaged grizzly and stabbing us with pangs of hunger–feels absolutely wonderful! Food might seem like a miracle. We may even be tempted to wrap our arms around the chef and give him/her a great big hug and kiss… Whew, I finally get to eat! Thank you for filling my aching stomach!

So the tragedy of poverty is not the experience in and of itself. It’s not so tragic to be hungry, thirsty or even homeless and unloved–as long as it’s temporary and solutions exist. We’ve all experienced deprivation. And sometimes the experience can make us stronger. Sometimes the experience makes us better people, causing us to develop empathy and compassion for those who are less fortunate. Even the wealthy experience poverty on occasion. (Some think they’re loved but are only loved for their money or celebrity status–so the cruel, sick joke is on them. They aren’t loved at all. Some think they’re unloved but are loved by secret admirers too timid or shy to tell them they’re loved. Or perhaps they aren’t open to accepting and valuing the love, so they can’t receive it. The love is there but they’ll never feel it. That is also tragic in its own way. Some people are wealthy financially but are spiritually and emotionally poor.)

But the tragedy of poverty is knowing it’ll never end. And that is what makes poor people crazy. Knowing that you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that the system is set up to make sure you’ll fail, that because you weren’t born with money, connections, the “right” race or gender, etc., you’ll never succeed.

So let me ask you this.

What would YOU do if you were suffering and knew that it would never end, that it’s permanent, there’s no hope for a better life. You’ll always suffer no matter what you do?

Warning: what you are about to read may be painful, a real tear-jerker. Please have plenty of tissue on hand. Don’t mess up the environment with your bodily fluids! Rein it all in with some tissue! This story will make you cry, as it is very, very heartbreaking. (Oh, and please make sure to place your used tissues in a recycling bin. Recycle those tissues! We Americans are going to have a lot to cry about in future months and years.)

Some millionaires (and possibly some billionaires!) lost their homes recently. Yes, huge, beautiful mansions were damaged when a fire broke out (as it often does) in California. Beautiful mansions were hurt, seriously hurt! Possibly some art and furniture worth millions of dollars may have been destroyed too. One can only speculate.

And the servants? What of the servants?! Did they survive? There was nothing mentioned about them in the news reports, so I guess we’ll never know. (If anyone reads this blog and finds anything out, please, please let me know.)

(Looks like I can’t embed the video of the news report, but you may view it by clicking on the link above.)

Thankfully, no one was killed by the blaze, but a few mansions were killed and several other mansions were injured. January was a very dry month for California, so the risk of fire was high. In fact, the true cause of the fire was California–it made the fateful mistake of being located atop a desert. Some millionaires made the choice to build mansions atop that same desert, knowing full well that fires in the region are common. (But we really need to find a poor or middle class person to blame so we can practice hating each other and scapegoating each other for things that go wrong in our world, right?)

The suspects, apparently, told authorities they’d started a campfire and “the wind picked up.” So can we blame the wind? Can we jail the wind? Can we sue the wind? Naw, it’s easier to just go ahead and blame some homeless people.

Now, as I said, such fires occur frequently in Southern Cali because of its arid environment. Last year (2013), a rim fire was started by a hunter who started a campfire the authorities had deemed “illegal.” However, the hunter was not arrested as he was not homeless, apparently, at the time. (But the fire fueled the war on drugs by enabling some people in the media to make the FALSE claim that the fire was started by marijuana growers!) Way to go, corporate media, when you do report the news make sure to embed some outright lies within it to manipulate the public toward whatever cause you happen to be supporting at the time. (Looking for excuses to imprison more Americans? Do the prisons need more money? Or do we just need another war? Hmm…the war on marijuana growers. Yes, let’s blame marijuana for EVERYTHING that’s wrong with our country right now. I think that would make things very interesting indeed–especially since lots of rich people smoke marijuana, and worse drugs…) By the way, I am NOT a marijuana grower or inhaler, just curious as to why the media feels the need to attack certain segments of our population and blame them for crimes that have nothing at all to do with them.

What about you, erstwhile reader, are you curious? Or would you rather just accept things as they are and not ask any questions…i.e., are you a typical American? Or will you dare to be different by thinking uncensored thoughts?

I like to ask questions which is why I have journalistic tendencies. But I gave up my interest in being a journalist when I sent out resumes and never got a response… I’m not a white male, don’t hail from a wealthy family, have absolutely no connections and…most important disqualification of all…I’m not a Republican who hates poor people, women, blacks, etc.

But if I were a journalist and had oodles of money, I would like to have traveled to the French Riviera, or wherever these millionaires were at the time their “homes” were damaged by the fire (yes, the media describes their mansions as homes! Ha Ha! No wonder they wouldn’t hire me as a journalist!) I’d also like to talk with the servants. How did they feel when they were evacuated from the “homes.” Was it nice having some time off from work? Are they worried they’ll lose their jobs, that their employers will sell off or tear down the mansions, thus removing the need for their employment? Will their employers give them huge pay raises so that they never become homeless and go out in the woods and set fires to warm up? Will all employers all over the country make a firm commitment right here and now to raise salaries and to hire more employees and pay them well to help curb the homelessness problem? Will banks all over the country agree not to foreclose on struggling homeowners so that they don’t become homeless and start fires? Will universities lower their tuition fees to zero for unemployed or underemployed people so they can go back to school again, acquire a marketable skill, get better jobs and not become homeless and start fires? Will the government (oh yes, our wonderful, caring, just and loving government!) provide welfare for anyone who can’t find a job and can’t afford to go back to college so that they don’t end up homeless and starting fires?

Gosh, I’d love to ask these questions.

Ah, but we’ll hear none of that because, you see, I am not a journalist. They are “journalists,” and they care absolutely nothing at all for average, ordinary working people.

But back to this dreadful fire that has rendered so many millionaires and billionaires “homeless.” Diamonds and pearls tarnished with a smoky smell that can’t be removed! Oh dear! And what of that mink coat! Was the Cadillac hurt? And what of the illustrious owners of these mansions? Where will they stay when they’re in California? Will they, heaven forbid, need to stay at a hotel? Not the Hilton, oh please God, not the Hilton. Please, don’t make me stoop so low… sniff, sniff. (Now, before you get mad at me, remember, I warned you that you’d need tissue, that this was a heartbreaking story indeed! Why, some of them will have to remain in the French Riviera indefinitely! While others might need to stay in their alternative homes in Manhattan. Perhaps instead of firing those servants they could just transfer them off to their other mansions? It’s just a thought.)

Indeed.

So the fire was, apparently, caused by three men who’d started a campfire the authorities have decided was illegal. Why were they starting a campfire? Why were previous fires caused by “illegal” campfires not resulting in arrests? Could it be… Yes, it must be true… Were the three men, by any chance, homeless? Were they starting a fire to warm up on a chilly night? To cook up some food perhaps?

Yes, I’m asking this question. (And again, I’m frustrated that I don’t have a larger platform for this because no one else seems to be asking these kinds of questions.) Were the three men arrested homeless? Why are they being arrested when previous “fire-starters” were not? Why are they being held on $500,000 bond each? Do you think that three homeless men are capable of paying for the damages done to rich people’s homes? Was the damage done to the rich people as a result of this fire equal to the damage done to these poor men’s lives as a result of homelessness, poverty and despair? How will the millionaires who owned the damaged mansions benefit from the destruction of those three men’s lives? Haven’t they suffered enough in this world?

Apparently not.

What kind of sick, twisted injustice is this? Oh, that’s right, I live in the USSA now, I forgot. Justice is a word, a mere word. And most Americans don’t even know how to spell it anymore, much less define it.

So let’s recite America’s new motto once again: Give me your tired and poor so that I can step on them over and over again with well-heeled shoes (shoes they never could afford for themselves, ha!) and crush them. Crush their bodies, crush their spirit, crush whatever’s left of a soul. Crush ’em all! Darned homeless people!

Ha ha, I just censored my words up above because I know that someone from the FBI, DHS (or the “A-Team”–CIA, NSA, TSA & God knows whatever other A), is reading this. In fact, Homeland inSecurity may be the only folks who are reading this blog! So, hey, thanks for reading!

Gee, I hope homeless people don’t set any more mansions on fire. I’m really strongly against such activity. And, seriously, I’m so sorry that our poverty and despair causes so much discomfort for you wealthy, privileged folks. Really, I wish I could end my own poverty so that it wouldn’t hurt you so much. Really. That brings me to the disclaimer/faux legalese that I must add at the end of this blog for the benefit of the A-team, etc. Please read the sentence below. It is very, very important.

Disclaimer: No mansions, diamonds, pearls or million-dollar artwork were damaged in the writing of this article.

I’d written in the past about a poor, struggling man I’d met in a city building. Both of us were there to resolve tickets we’d received by law enforcement, essentially, for being poor. What I mean is, it’s a crime in the US to be poor. Poor people seem to acquire all sorts of legal problems. In Southern California, for example, jaywalking is a serious crime. Mostly only poor people walk over there, of course. And if you can’t afford to pay the jaywalking ticket…well, you can end up in the slammer. Yep, people go to jail for crossing the street in California. I kid you not! A person’s entire life can be ruined by a single act of crossing a street when the walk signal (light flashes an image of a little androgynous human) stops flashing.

But I told myself this blog would be extremely short. So here goes: My little experiment in writing more frequently but shortening the size of each entry…

This poor unfortunate man I’d met had serious health problems and was collecting disability. He was suffering quite a bit and struggling to pay his medical bills. “The rich are getting mean,” he lamented as we’d gotten into a discussion about the social injustice of our needing to constantly defend ourselves legally. (It’s as though we have to defend our very existence. Do the rich want us dead? Why do they hate us so much?) There’s always some ticket to pay, some ordinance or law to be violated, when you’re poor. My car was ticketed and I had to go to court to defend myself for driving such an old, beat up used car. So I dropped my car off to a junkyard and proceeded to watch my life fall apart, as it was nearly impossible to find a decent job without a car. When I went to court, I had to show proof that I’d given up my car. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry I’d been driving such a stinky car and that it was polluting your fine California air. But I’d drive a much nicer and less stinky car if I could afford it. Really, I would.” But instead, I showed them the proof that I was carless and then began risking getting mugged by taking Southern California’s wonderful and exciting (nearly was assaulted several times!) “public” transportation system. Once I no longer had a car, I found that opportunities diminished for me in so many ways. People looked down on me because they saw me–horror of horrors!–walking in LA. Basically, a lot of people didn’t want to be my friend. I couldn’t socialize with them anymore as I had no way of getting to the places where they went. (Unless, of course, a friend offered to give me a ride, but that would mean giving, helping, assisting another human being. But, of course, that would involve socialism and most of my friends were against socialism, so they wouldn’t dare help me in any way. I’m very grateful for that, though, because it gave me a chance to see what kind of people they really were. You don’t always get that chance when you have a lot of money and your life is going well.) And, as I said, job opportunities were very limited for me once I had no transportation. Most available jobs these days are not on the bus line and as public transportation increasing gets cut, that problem is increasing. (Hmm… so I wonder how it benefits society to force poor people to give up their cars when their cars don’t meet the strict environmental inspection standards set up by wealthy bureaucrats? But then I’m always wondering how it benefits society to allow the government and big banks to take away people’s homes just because people can’t afford to pay their bills. Yes, people should pay their bills but…do we really want to take away people’s homes and create a new population of homeless people?)

(Okay, I’ve tried to embed the above video of Bryan Stevenson’s talk, but, for some strange reason, it won’t embed on this site. Every time I type in the code, it disappears once I save this blog. Yep, I type it in, hit “save” then open up the blog and everything I typed is gone. This happened with my previous blog entry also. As you can see, though, the other videos embedded just fine. Not sure what’s going on here. A virus on my computer perhaps? A glitch on WordPress? Perhaps it’s the NSA virus? Anyhow, it’s odd. But I’ve got the URL typed up there, so if you’d like to view this wonderful video about poverty and crime, please click on that link.)

But this doesn’t affect the rich or even much of the middle class, so why do I even bring this up? Yes, the rich are getting mean, but so, oddly enough, are the middle class. They may not be the so-called “one percent” but they sure do think they’re better when they live in their gated communities far, far away from the riff raff, i.e., the poor.

And yet, perhaps ironically, the word “mean” as a noun refers to money, property or wealth. Yes, the rich have the means to be mean.

( Above video is from youtube.com/user/KafkaWinstonWorld )

So here it is–my first blog of the year! And an attempt to make it a short blog entry. Okay, I didn’t do as well on that as I’d hoped, but I’m getting there… 😉